by Scott McEwen
“What do you want?”
“First, I want Chance Vaught eliminated. Then you can do me the service of eliminating Rhett Hancock. By now, I’m guessing Ortega has given you that name, so you can go ahead and eliminate Ortega as well.”
The second that Jessup heard Hancock’s name, his mind caught on fire with the flames of betrayal, and he knew that Mariana had set him up. Bitch! he thought to himself.
“I’ll take care of Hancock soon enough,” Crosswhite said. “Mariana’s got nothing to do with any of this, so—”
“Lie!” Fields said. “I know all about your arrangements with Castañeda. She’s every bit as involved in this as you are. So dispense with the bullshit. Is Vaught there with you? Kill him now, or I’ll kill your little sweetheart here.”
“Vaught’s not with me,” Crosswhite said. “The Ruvalcabas have declared war on Toluca PD. They’re moving to take over the city, and Hancock is with them. Before it’s over, I’ll kill him, or he’ll kill me. That’s all I can guarantee. Now, let Mariana go.”
Fields covered the receiver with his hand, saying to Fito, “Kill him.”
Jessup made a break for it, but Fito shot him down before he’d gone ten feet.
Field’s put the phone back to his ear. “Tell me what happened to the gold you and Shannon hid in Paris?”
There came a tired sigh from Crosswhite’s end of the line. “Fields, I know it won’t do any good to tell you this, but every ounce of that gold went to Pope. Now he’s using it to fund the ATRU. By the way: I do have Ortega. If you hurt Marina, I promise you he’ll testify before the Senate subcommittee.”
Fields chortled, grinding his foot against Mariana’s throat to the point that her eyes began to bulge. “You’ll have to bluff harder than that, Daniel. Ortega will never testify truthfully. He’s got way too much to lose, and it would be his word against Pope’s. Who do you think the Senate will believe?”
“Let her go,” Crosswhite said. “That’s the only way we can make a deal.”
Fields put the phone down close to Mariana’s mouth and released the pressure. “Say hello.”
“Dan!” she rasped. “Don’t—!”
He crushed her throat shut again, choking off her warning. “Now, tell me: Does it sound to you like you’re in a position to give me ultimatums?”
“Fields, I’m only gonna warn you once.”
“Warn me what?”
A green 1971 Dodge pickup came skidding around the corner of the building and slid to stop in the gravel. A gringo wearing a tan ball cap jumped out with a 1911 pistol and began firing at the run.
“It’s him!” Fito shouted, returning fire as he dove for cover behind Fields’s car, but Memo was already down and bleeding out.
Fields hauled Mariana to her feet by the hair, using her as a shield as he backed quickly into the building through a broken-out window. She kicked to get free, but she was too weak from electrical shock and strangulation.
The gringo ran low along the wall while Fito’s bullets ricocheted off the concrete above his head. When he heard Fito’s empty magazine clatter to the cement, he charged at the car and dove across the hood, grabbing Fito’s gun and landing on top of him. He jammed the muzzle of the .45 into Fito’s belly and squeezed the trigger.
Fito squealed like a child, instantly relinquishing his grip on the weapon.
The gringo got to his feet and threw the pistol over a fence, walking around the car and into the building. With the broken glass crunching beneath the heels of his worn cowboy boots, he found Fields hiding in an empty office, holding one of the twin’s straight razors to Mariana’s throat.
The moment Fields saw him, his eyebrows soared in disbelief. “You’re dead!”
Gil Shannon pointed the 1911 into his face, his chiseled visage set. “Not hardly. Drop the razor and let go of her.”
Fields did as he said, and Mariana stumbled away, sliding down the wall, rasping for air.
Gil shot Fields in both knees.
Fields collapsed, wrapping his arms around his legs and gnashing his teeth in pain.
Gil reloaded the weapon and crouched beside him, saying in a calm voice: “Operation One-Way Trip. China Mission, September 2005. You ordered three Vietnamese agents murdered after my extraction. Why?”
“Go fuck yourself!” Fields grunted, in more pain than he’d ever known.
Gil shot him in the foot, and Fields writhed around in even more agony, calling him filthy names. After giving him a minute to shout himself calm, Gil repeated the question.
“Just kill me!” Fields sneered. “Kill me, you fucking bastard!”
“I will when I’m ready,” Gil said quietly, aiming at the other foot. “Tell me why.”
“It was a closed operation, you motherfucker! You know what that means: no fucking witnesses!”
“Who gave the order?”
“It was Pope’s operation! He gave the orders, and I saw to it they were carried out! Now fuck you!”
“You slipped up,” Gil said. “One of the agents survived, and he gave me your fucking name.” He stood up and shot Fields dead. “Now reap the whirlwind.”
He went to Mariana, who lay against the wall, crouching down to help her sit up and using a finger to gently push the hair from her face. “You okay?”
She nodded, gripping her shoulders against the ache left over from the violent muscle contractions. “How are you alive?” she asked. “Even Pope thinks you’re dead.”
“I learned to fly recently.” He lifted her from the floor. “Still workin’ on my landings, though.”
She slid an arm around his neck, resting her head against his shoulder as he carried her out to the truck. “How did you know where to find me?”
“Midori hijacked one of Pope’s surveillance drones last night when Crosswhite couldn’t reach you. She’s been watching you ever since. I was arriving at the airport when she saw you being stuffed into a trunk. She vectored me in by phone.”
She looked at him. “Does Dan know you’re alive?”
“Only you and Midori. And that’s how it has to stay.”
“For how long?”
He opened the squeaky door of the truck and set her down on the passenger side. “Forever.”
“My passport,” she said, pointing at Fields’s car. “He has my phones and my passport.”
Gil retrieved her belongings and then ducked through a hole in the fence, finding the silenced pistol and wiping off his fingerprints before tossing it into a pile of garbage.
A couple of miles into their trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mariana felt well enough to carry on a conversation. “Can I ask you something?”
He glanced at her, one hand dipped over the wheel as they rattled along. “Shoot.”
“How much gold did you two hide from Pope?”
“Is that what Dan told you—We took gold?”
“No, he denies it, but nothing else explains the way you two are acting.”
Gil seemed to give it some thought before deciding how to answer. “Can you see me and Crosswhite fencing gold bullion on the black market without Pope catching us?”
“I guess not,” she admitted. “Not if you put it that way. But tell me what’s going on. Why was Fields so convinced?”
“Hold the wheel a minute.” She held the wheel while he lit a cigarette with a match. “Lost my lighter in China.” He tossed the match, still smoking, onto the dust-covered dashboard. “We found six million in Swedish bearer bonds in the same storage container and walked out with them under our jackets.”
A smile spread across her face. “The perfect crime; totally untraceable.”
He exhaled smoke. “Pope was so busy brokering the gold over next few weeks, he never even noticed our trip to the Caymans.”
“When did you first start to lose faith?”
“Cro
sswhite lost his after Earnest Endeavor. I didn’t lose mine until Pope left me hanging in Lichtenstein. The Russian mob moved right into the same hotel I was staying at. He missed it, and I damn near bought it. That’s when I realized his mind was on much bigger things than me. The old Pope would never have made that mistake.”
“So what now?”
“Now . . .” He took a drag from the cigarette. “Now we get Pope to appoint you Mexico chief of station.”
She gaped at him. “Are you high?”
“What’s wrong? You don’t want the job?”
She sat up in the seat. “Want the job? How are we going to get him to give it to me?”
“We won’t leave him any choice.”
“What about Dan?”
Gil shrugged. “What about him?”
“He was counting on your help with the sniper.”
“Dan can handle Rhett Hancock.”
“You know him?”
“I know about him. He’s a good shot, but he’s nothing special. Besides, if I stick my nose into that fight down in Toluca, Pope will recognize my kill patterns and figure out I’m still alive. I can’t risk that. I went through too goddamn much trouble getting myself killed.”
“Well, if I have to keep your secret, I at least want to know how you did it—and why.”
He stopped for a red light and looked at her, the merest hint of a grin on his face. “I can see what he sees in you.”
Her face flushed, and she looked out the window. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Gil chuckled and pulled through the intersection. “Why is my secret, but how is easy enough to tell . . .”
72
ZHANGJIAJIE, CHINA
12:50 HOURS
Out of the fog appeared a flatbed tow truck with the ramp down, its yellow lights flashing atop the cab.
“This is gonna taste like shit!” Gil snarled, locking up the brakes and skidding cockeyed up the ramp, seemingly out of control. The battered black Land Rover caromed off the back of the cab and careened over the guardrail to disappear into the fog.
The exploding airbag was a problem for the first half second—the hot gas and powder stinging Gil’s eyes as he released the seat belt. But the vehicle rolled over to the right as planned, and he opened the door, allowing the centrifugal force to throw him clear. After that it was simply a matter of spreading his arms and legs, soaring away though the fog in the black wing suit.
Unable to see the surface of the river, he kept an eye on the altimeter Velcroed to his wrist, conscious of the fact he was picking up a good deal of speed as he descended. Thirty feet from the surface, the mist cleared well enough to see, and he braced himself for impact, skidding into the water at an angle of 20 degrees doing better than sixty miles per hour. The impact bloodied his nose, knocked the wind out of him, and dislocated his shoulder, but he rolled onto his back and kept himself afloat until Nahn came motoring out of the morning fog to haul him into a small boat.
They were ashore within three minutes, where Nahn reset his shoulder by sitting on the ground, putting his foot into Gil’s armpit and giving his wrist a stiff pull. The joint popped back into the socket, and Gil sat up with a groan, working the shoulder.
“How was your flight?” Nahn asked with a grin.
Gil got to his feet, unzipping the soaking wing suit. “The service was a little slow.”
They were in a van headed for Chongqing ten minutes later. Upon their arrival at a secluded airfield, the two were flown in a private plane to within a few miles of the Vietnamese border, where both men parachuted out of the aircraft at low altitude, gliding over the border to land safely in northern Vietnam, where Nahn’s nephews were waiting to take them to Hanoi.
From Hanoi, Gil was able to access his bank account in the Cayman Islands and make all the necessary arrangements for his trip to Mexico.
At the airport, Gil and Nahn shook hands.
“Thanks, old friend. I owe you more than I can repay. And don’t worry. The man who betrayed you will pay for what he did. You have my word.”
Nahn smiled, saying, “Ai làm ny chu.” Roughly translated: Whoever sows wind shall harvest storm.
73
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
16:00 HOURS
Midori appeared in the doorway to Pope’s office. “You wanted to see me?”
He looked up and closed his laptop. “Come in and shut the door.”
She did as she was told, taking the seat before his desk and crossing her legs.
The vein in his head was pulsing, though his face showed no outward emotion. “You’ve been a very bad girl.”
“Oh?” she said innocently. “How so?”
“Lazaro Serrano is dead.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know what that’s got to do with me. I’ve never even been to Mexico.”
“Fields isn’t answering his phone.”
She shrugged again. “It isn’t my day to watch him.”
“Yet it appears you’ve been doing exactly that. What’s more, last night you took personal control of a UAV”—an unmanned aerial vehicle—“and more than twelve hours of surveillance footage have been illegally purged from all three data bases.”
“Again,” she said, “I don’t know what that has to do with me. The CIA doesn’t have stealth drones in the skies over Mexico. The president himself said so last week on national television.”
He sat staring at her.
“You can’t have me prosecuted, Robert. We both know that. So you can either get over it, fire me, or have me killed. Which is it going to be?”
Pope ignored what he considered hyperbole. “Is Fields dead?”
She laced her fingers in her lap. “Extremely.”
He reddened. “Ortega?”
“No, but Crosswhite has him on ice. I don’t expect he’ll kill him unless Ortega does something stupid.”
Pope took off his glasses and tossed them onto the desk. “So who’s running the goddamn show down there?”
“Mariana Mederos—and she appears to have all of her ducks in a row.”
“Does she, indeed? What are her intentions?”
“I don’t know. I suppose we’ll both have to wait and see.”
“This is entirely unacceptable!”
Midori grabbed the arms of the chair and sat forward. “Do you ever listen to yourself? Unacceptable, Robert? You assassinated an American diplomat!”
He darkened. “I’m not the first director to do so.”
“And you might not be the last, but Alice Downly was your last—at least as long as I’m working for you. I won’t be party to it. I’ve gathered enough intelligence to demonstrate that you were complicit in her death. If I turn up dead, that intelligence goes public. And I’m not just talking about WikiLeaks. You can fire me, and I’ll go away quietly—I’m not a vindictive person—but I have no control over what happens after I’m dead. My protector is beyond your reach.”
“Your protector?” He opened the middle desk drawer, taking the top from a prescription bottle and swallowing an anxiety pill, chasing it with a drink of water. Then Pope tossed the pills back into the drawer and slammed it shut. “Damn you!”
“Damn you,” she said quietly.
“I trusted you!”
“I trusted you.”
Pope stood up from the desk and went to the window, looking out over the campus with his arms folded. “What about Hancock?” he said finally.
“Crosswhite and Vaught are organizing the defense of Toluca. They plan to kill him during the battle. That’s as much as I know.”
He turned around. “Battle? What the hell’s going on down there?”
“Crosswhite couldn’t get to Serrano in time to stop the Ruvalcabas from moving to take over the city. The fighting began about an hour ago. The Mexican
government has its hands full in Mexico City, where the Ruvalcabas are causing chaos, which means they’re not sending any reinforcements.”
“So it’s civil war.”
She shook her head. “Not really. Just another battle for a Mexican town while the federal government keeps its back turned. More like business as usual, I’d say.”
“I want to talk to Crosswhite. I assume you’re in contact?”
“He won’t talk to you. He’s made it clear you have no say in what’s going on down there right now.”
“He and Mariana are working together?”
She nodded. “Vaught is with them.”
Pope stood stroking his chin. “They’re setting themselves up to take over Mexico station.”
“Robert, with Fields dead and Ortega fully compromised, they are Mexico station.”
The die was cast, and the CIA director saw there was nothing he could do about it. “What do they need from me?”
“They haven’t asked for anything. They don’t trust you anymore; not after you turned them over to Fields. He tried to have them both killed. I’ll take it on faith you knew nothing about that—and if you did, I don’t ever want to know.”
“Who killed Fields?”
Not entirely convinced it was the correct move, Midori stuck to the plan and followed Gil’s advice. “Mariana projected his movement; she acted first.”
Pope’s eyes widened. “You’re telling me she preempted him?”
“That’s correct.”
“She did it herself?”
“Of course not. She maneuvered him into position for Castañeda’s people.”
“She’s learning,” he muttered, retaking his chair. “Her plan must be to consolidate the drug trade under Castañeda. Bad choice. But with Serrano dead, Ruvalcaba becomes a nonstarter.”
“She can work with Castañeda. He respects her—at least for now—and he’s content to honor the truce.”
“Time will tell the truth of that. Where is she now?”
“She’s safe. That’s all she’d say.”
He elected not to waste time trying to get Midori to betray Mariana. “How much do your assistants know about this?”
